Every Ham has a duty to attend the Hamvention at least once in their life, something like the Hajj. Both the MRCA and MMRCG have large contingents in place during the event it's not just buying and selling but in the last twenty years has also included operational military radio nets. It is the annual get together for our community.

I arrived Thursday and helped setting up the tables and items located at the MMRCG pavilion. On Friday we had rain early and that was an issue but it cleared by noon on Friday. John Caldwell spent much of the day distributing all of the equipment that was purchased as part of the W4VAG estate. Other items were sold but not everything. Prices were reasonable or at least that’s what I thought.

Saturday morning I wanted to work the Military RTTY Net on 7087 at 0900 that morning. I did not have time to build up audio cable for my computer and the Harris Falcon (RF-5020, Amplifier and fast tuner) but KA8TUR Jim loaned me a cable and PC for working the net but had issues getting my transmit audio to work. Most of the regulars like K4NYW, K9WT and W2HX were at the event so that only left K3TZJ and WB2JWU on the air and although I did have solid copy (+20) on K3TZJ WB2JWU was week on the vertical but I am confident that if I had all my audio issues working would have worked them but was only able to receive. At 1000 local did the MMRCG 7296 USB Net and had 9 stations participate including W4OSS, W6MP and K3TZJ all take part from there home QTH with the others being all portable at the Hamvention. 1200 hours local we had the annual WW2 backpack Net on 3885, Used the Harris again for NCS at reduced power. We had around twenty stations check in. Several BC-611, couple 5300 sets and a GRC-9 with the hand crank generator for transmit.

At 1300 hours did check in with the 18.1575 Pack Net but was told that they had it all in hand so decided to check out and do something else. 1400 WDA8DAS and KA8TUR held the annual 51.0 Cold War Net and did a great job working with a plethora of stations. The 51.0 Net has more participating stations then all the other combined! Wanted to do a 144.25 VHF AM Net at 1500 hours but the Cold War Net was so big it ran well over so although we did play with 144.25 a little did not do a formal Net.

The first time I used the Harris in the field with the fast tuner. Also used presets for all the Net operations so only had to go to a different channel and would have never thought I would like that somehow have to say it was way convenient, the twenty four foot vertical work almost as well as a real antenna although feel that we would have had a small edge on the lower bands with a inverted V.

Don’t know why I did not have transmitted audio from the cable, had plenty of receive audio for teletype. The original intent was to use a period correct TCS set up for the 3885 Net but somehow did not get much receive signal on the TCS so at the last minute decided to go with the Harris. No idea what was going on with the 181575 Pack Net, but they appeared to have everything under control, and the 51.0 Cold War Net running long was just one of those things. I have already been talking up a new and improved 144.25 AM Net for Gilbert MRCA in September.

Great turn out again for this year, we do have a territorial issue where the MRCA people are located in there section by the entrance road and the MMRCG people are in the center of the event but cant see that changing any time soon. We will all be together at the Howell building in September.

It’s a big event with people and equipment from all over so got to expect hardware issues, would like to hear any thought about operation of the nets, types of hardware used or any other additional comments anyone may have.